beccablog, teacher-librarian

I am teaching voicethread class this afternoon to teachers in our district.  For the class, I created a resource wiki (http://bvvoicethread.wikispaces.com/), so we can post new ideas and access resources that I found to help beginners.

We recently purchased the education license of Voicethread.  It makes it easier to manage for the most part.  Recently, they added a feature that will be very nice for massive import of students.

Import – you can import a csv file (excel) of student’s names.  To add the students to a “class” or group as they call it, you have to individually select a student to join the group.  However, this can be quite cumbersome, so they made it where students can join a group by inputting a teacher code.  This will drop the students name into the group. 

Now, as we are beginning to use voicethread more often, I try to find good examples.  Often, I find basically reports of sorts without the discussion.  I believe the exciting thing about voicethread is the collaboration aspect – where students, teachers, parents, city, and global citizens can access and comment to create a good discussion. 

How do we connect through voicethread? Should we just do a search and locate a voicethread we want to comment?

How do we provide a “global” aspect with students – so other people around the world can comment on their voicethread?

I have a teacher wanting to connect her U.S. History students with another U.S. History class in a different part of the country.  How do we go about it?